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The only way to do it would be if Linux was huge and NVIDIA depended on it in a big way, then there could be some leverage. But as it is now, 1% market share makes the idea financially unsound.

Stop trolling, NVidia is not supporting Linux for the ~1% or ~3% or whatever in between represents the Linux desktop market share. They are supporting Linux because Linux is absoloutely dominant in HPC where GPU's are heavily utilized, just as in the 3D/SFX markets where Linux is also huge.

Why do you think NVidia keeps up-to-date drivers with great CUDA and OpenCL support for Linux? For all the Linux games on utilizing those technologies? Of course not, those technologies are however heavily in use in the aforementioned markets, of course HPC in particular.

And these markets are getting even more important for discrete GPU vendors like NVidia as the end user desktop is moving away from discrete GPU's to GPGPU solutions. Also since NVidia can't get a licence to produce their own GPGPU solutions on the x86 architecture the x86-based user desktop is becoming a dead market for them as their days there are numbered.

Of course they have the ARM platform which they are now focusing on, and the future battle on mobile devices between Intel's new low power offerings versus ARM will be interesting to watch. Personally I'm rooting for ARM for no other reason than that I really want competition.

And just so that those who think NVidia 'rules' the desktop, here are some 2012 first quarter numbers to ponder:

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I've been using Nouveau exclusively since the beginning of this year and I'm even using it to do 3d sculpting in Blender, so stop spreading your bullshit.

well, i should have defined that in more detail. Noveau has 3d support, yes. Have you tried advanced games with it ? Have your tried unigine benchmarks/games ? Wine ? Beside that, every tried hardware video decoding ? VDPAU ?
I guess you invested some money in your nvidia card and everybody doing this is glad to have the blob to be able to really utilize the card !

Cudos to the noveau devs, they surely do a great job.

But right now, buying a powerful nvidia card and then using noveau is , to use your words, bullshit !

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We can only get along if we respect each other. Per definition "proprietary" is "owned, ruled". Per definition "GPL" is "open and protected against closing". If proprietary tries to take over GPL code, GPL is enforced the way it was designed.

We can't get along so long we try to enslave friends. This is what "proprietary" does to survive.

I get that you posted your video a bit ironic or so, but the point is wrong, its not about a needy guy who does not want to share, the opposite is true, they dont want to share (for free) closed source most of the time. but that only as a side note and even if they want to share for now money its kind of a trojan horse thing, that enslaves your "friends" ^^

But to your wayland point, are they able to support it without a free driver lisense wise? As example they cant use gallium3d as far as I know because galliums lisense forbits unfree drivers to use it. But its a bad choke than that they will not support it, maybe it takes very long time, like it took nvidia also at some api changes 6 months or 1 year till you could use a newer x-server with it. But wayland will become preinstlaled on many linux-systems in next few years I guess. So they would say, you have to first pre-install first linux with a ncurses installer or something like that ^^ before you can than manually install x-server because you did choose the wrong grafics card, that would be funny. Or more likely, the installers would use X and then would give you the choice something like do you use a nvidia card? or a detection and then if that hits yes, it would install x-server and if not it would install wayland, would be funny. Go for it retarded nvidia.

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But to your wayland point, are they able to support it without a free driver lisense wise? As example they cant use gallium3d as far as I know because galliums lisense forbits unfree drivers to use it. But its a bad choke than that they will not support it, maybe it takes very long time, like it took nvidia also at some api changes 6 months or 1 year till you could use a newer x-server with it. But wayland will become preinstlaled on many linux-systems in next few years I guess. So they would say, you have to first pre-install first linux with a ncurses installer or something like that ^^ before you can than manually install x-server because you did choose the wrong grafics card, that would be funny. Or more likely, the installers would use X and then would give you the choice something like do you use a nvidia card? or a detection and then if that hits yes, it would install x-server and if not it would install wayland, would be funny. Go for it retarded nvidia.

Yes, the wayland it very new and green, but I just choose it as an example. They will support wayland, but only when and if they decide to do it. This is exactly like microsoft and is the reason why linux grows. Users are treated as consumers, not prosumers. They are dependent on decisions above. GPL is the reaction to fight this.

They can stay closed source, but they must understand that this model also comes with disadvantages and inevitable problems, exactly like the one we have with DMA-BUF, and that it will force them to make decisions and/or workarounds.

Oh look, another troll. Or likely just one of the already existing using another account.

heh, or a douchy condescending scumbag from russian forums like linux.org.ru and opennet.ru, who managed to learn some lingo for himself and now is being proud as fuck about that accomplishment.
desire to suck Nvidia's silicon dick is the strongest in those ones, from what i've seen. as a desire to praise "most free" licenses, like BSD one, without actually using software licenced with it for the most part.
with those levels of douchiness, he maybe even be into some of those IT workers certification programmes from proprietary vendors like MS?,a straight-up MSP Fucker? or just an average angry little psycho, who bought himself an Optimus laptop, but at some point in life figured, that Windows? isn't very user-friendly and reliable, if you want some real work done.

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I think Nvidia right now is in a position where they can't just ignore opening their source anymore, I mean, Intel and AMD is catching up very rapidly and they support Linux/FOSS, they have open source graphics drivers, they provide specifications, etc.

Also, Nvidia must understand they will be facing more issues like the DMA-BUF situation, where they can't use existing components due to licensing, etc. They will have more problems when Wayland becomes the de-facto standard, or when UEFI (Secure boot) gets more widespread, and probably a lot of other things that I can't think of right now. Anyone else knows of other things that will block them eventually?

Their binary blob won't scale much more, they need to re-think the situation and make new decisions. Either work with the Linux developers and provide specifications or their source code or simply stop giving the "support" they give now with the binary blob, it won't last much longer anyway.

-> It is not possible for nvidia to open the source of their nvidia driver. thats a fact. To use some of your words: "Come over it". There driver shares 90% of the code with the windows one.
-> providing specs surely will help in the long run, but we don't want a solution that hits in 3 years.. Even with specs i doubt noveau can ever reach a level were it is on par with the nvidia blob, simply to limited resources etc.. etc..

Imho, the kernel dev's shouls dimply change the export of that function. It's entirely possible that its also not legal to use dma-buf even if the export symbols is changed, but afaik nvidia already uses some kernel interfaces so they know about the risk.

If the situation stays as it is, 2 things could happen:

1. Nvidia says "Fuck you" and doesn't care about Optimus on Linux anymore -> Bad for the users
2. Nvidia decides to implement something in their blob to work around the issue -> Even more propietary things used in the end, instead of a well documented kernel interface

So, right now, please tell me, who benefits from the "dma-buf" block ???????????????????

The Enduser -> NOOOOOOOOOO
Getting rid of propietary things -> NOOOOOOO, even more things could move into the blob

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The only way to do it would be if Linux was huge and NVIDIA depended on it in a big way, then there could be some leverage. But as it is now, 1% market share makes the idea financially unsound.

/siren

the 'market share' argument

1% of computers run gnu/linux or some variant of gnu/linux - this is utter bullshit

gnu/linux runs on all kinds of systems all over the world from set top boxes to webservers to super computers

lets flip this round for a moment...

if you count any electronic device with a cpu as a computer what is the percentage of these systems that run say a microsoft operating system?

and out of the top 100 most powerful computers in the world what percentage of these run gnu/linux?

the 1% figure comes right out of the m$ propaganda department as they only count consumer P.C.s and laptops

and as for the legal problem regarding the nvidia way of working with the community - didn't nvidia recently lose a rather lucrative sale due to a chinese company being unable to use the blob?

The closed method is wrong and has been proven to be wrong in both financial terms and development terms

the free(dom)/open method has created some of the best and most innovative solutions available because it gives individuals and companies the opportunity to develop what is best for them and not what some other company who's interests are in market domination thinks is best for them

if you don't like the open drivers then YOU have the opportunity and the tools to make them better suited to your needs

ofcourse the morons who are defending nvidias position will not read this let alone have a clue what i'm talking about ....

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-> It is not possible for nvidia to open the source of their nvidia driver. thats a fact. To use some of your words: "Come over it". There driver shares 90% of the code with the windows one.
-> providing specs surely will help in the long run, but we don't want a solution that hits in 3 years.. Even with specs i doubt noveau can ever reach a level were it is on par with the nvidia blob, simply to limited resources etc.. etc..

Imho, the kernel dev's shouls dimply change the export of that function. It's entirely possible that its also not legal to use dma-buf even if the export symbols is changed, but afaik nvidia already uses some kernel interfaces so they know about the risk.

If the situation stays as it is, 2 things could happen:

1. Nvidia says "Fuck you" and doesn't care about Optimus on Linux anymore -> Bad for the users
2. Nvidia decides to implement something in their blob to work around the issue -> Even more propietary things used in the end, instead of a well documented kernel interface

So, right now, please tell me, who benefits from the "dma-buf" block ???????????????????

The Enduser -> NOOOOOOOOOO
Getting rid of propietary things -> NOOOOOOO, even more things could move into the blob

Again, who benefits from this decision now??

like i've already said - the nvidia blob licence and the GPL are incompatible. Today this affects the DMA_BUF but tomorrow who knows - the legal issues will continue to reoccur

the only solution is to have GPL drivers which already exist and work reasonably well despite the lack of input from nvidia

I have a amd gpu on my HTPC using the radeon driver and i must admit i'm pleased and even shocked at how well they work. The intel gpus I have work very well also but they're obviously not nearly as powerful as the amd gpus

P.S. what software are people running that require opengl 4.x other than the unigine demos